Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Capture One 5 - High 5!

Capture One 4 has been replaced by the rather predictably named Capture One 5

I have been using it for a little while as a beta tester and while my excitement upon down downloading was followed by being rather underwhelmed initially at least, because it does, at first glance look exactly the same as Capture One 4

In addition to a host of new and improved features I can tell you that even in beta version this software is SO stable, not a single crash or hiccup, ever, once.

I'm just going to share with you my very own personal highlights, but there are many, many more!

1. The Focus Mask

This is a killer feature, enabling you to quickly and easily cast your eye over a gallery of hundreds of RAW images and tell at a glance which images are sharp (the green area denotes sharpness)

Out of Focus......

In Focus..........

I have been using this feature extensively, saving myself a whole ton of time, works amazingly well on a two monitor set up

2. Spot Removal

As it would imply, gives the user the ability to remove spots, wether they be dust, gloop or whatever, and apply the correction to lots of images. Other competitor have boasted this for a little while now, but Phase have done an especially good job of implementation

Here we have an image marked for correction

3. Enhanced Colour Editor and skin Tone adjustments

Just brilliant control of skin tones, better and more accurate than ever before, yes folks, the best in my opinion.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, try the 30 day free download though here

Now, god knows I cannot think of a trade which moans more than photographer's, and I should know!

But in answer to the question 'is it actually worth buying?'

I can say a whole hearted YES! Upgrade from Capture One 4 is only $129 or €99

(Actually I got it wrong! It is even cheaper than I thought $99 or €69, so a real no brainer)

You get a whole host of improvements and new features which have transformed it into a joy to use

So congratulations Phase One, it took a little time to get there but I feel this is the BEST version of Capture One yet, not to mention the king of RAW software